OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Maintaining driver attentiveness in shared-control autonomous driving
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

We present a work-in-progress approach to improving driver attentiveness in cars provided with automated driving systems. The approach is based on a control loop that monitors the driver's biometrics (eye movement, heart rate, etc.) and the state of the car; analyses the driver's attentiveness level using a deep neural network; plans driver alerts and changes in the speed of the car using a formally verified controller; and executes this plan using actuators ranging from acoustic and visual to haptic devices. The paper presents (i) the self-adaptive system formed by this monitor-analyse-plan-execute (MAPE) control loop, the car and the monitored driver, and (ii) the use of probabilistic model checking to synthesise the controller for the planning step of the MAPE loop.
Evaluating SZZ Implementations Through a Developer-informed Oracle
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2021
Year: 2021

The SZZ algorithm for identifying bug-inducing changes has been widely used to evaluate defect prediction techniques and to empirically investigate when, how, and by whom bugs are introduced. Over the years, researchers have proposed several heuristics to improve the SZZ accuracy, providing various implementations of SZZ. However, fairly evaluating those implementations on a reliable oracle is an open problem: SZZ evaluations usually rely on (i) the manual analysis of the SZZ output to classify the identified bug-inducing commits as true or false positives; or (ii) a golden set linking bug-fixing and bug-inducing commits. In both cases, these manual evaluations are performed by researchers with limited knowledge of the studied subject systems. Ideally, there should be a golden set created by the original developers of the studied systems. We propose a methodology to build a "developer-informed" oracle for the evaluation of SZZ variants. We use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify bug-fixing commits in which developers explicitly reference the commit(s) that introduced a fixed bug. This was followed by a manual filtering step aimed at ensuring the quality and accuracy of the oracle. Once built, we used the oracle to evaluate several variants of the SZZ algorithm in terms of their accuracy. Our evaluation helped us to distill a set of lessons learned to further improve the SZZ algorithm.
A $2$-Approximation Algorithm for Flexible Graph Connectivity
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2021
Year: 2021

We present a $2$-approximation algorithm for the Flexible Graph Connectivity problem [AHM20] via a reduction to the minimum cost $r$-out $2$-arborescence problem.
Growth Functions, Rates and Classes of String-Based Multiway Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2021
Year: 2021

In context of the Wolfram Physics Project, a certain class of abstract rewrite systems known as "multiway systems" have played an important role in discrete models of spacetime and quantum mechanics. However, as abstract mathematical entities, these rewrite systems are interesting in their own right. This paper undertakes the effort to establish computational properties of multiway systems. Specifically, we investigate growth rates and growth classes of string-based multiway systems. After introducing the concepts of "growth functions", "growth rates" and "growth classes" to quantify a system's state-space growth over "time" (successive steps of evolution) on different levels of precision, we use them to show that multiway systems can, in a specific sense, grow slower than all computable functions while never exceeding the growth rate of exponential functions. In addition, we start developing a classification scheme for multiway systems based on their growth class. Furthermore, we find that multiway growth functions are not trivially regular but instead "computationally diverse", meaning that they are capable of computing or approximating various commonly encountered mathematical functions. We discuss several implications of these properties as well as their physical relevance. Apart from that, we present and exemplify methods for explicitly constructing multiway systems to yield desired growth functions.
Challenges in Digital Twin Development for Cyber-Physical Production Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2021
Year: 2021

The recent advancement of information and communication technology makes digitalisation of an entire manufacturing shop-floor possible where physical processes are tightly intertwined with their cyber counterparts. This led to an emergence of a concept of digital twin, which is a realistic virtual copy of a physical object. Digital twin will be the key technology in Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) and its market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Nevertheless, digital twin is still relatively a new concept that people have different perspectives on its requirements, capabilities, and limitations. To better understand an effect of digital twin's operations, mitigate complexity of capturing dynamics of physical phenomena, and improve analysis and predictability, it is important to have a development tool with a strong semantic foundation that can accurately model, simulate, and synthesise the digital twin. This paper reviews current state-of-art on tools and developments of digital twin in manufacturing and discusses potential design challenges.
Throughput Maximization of Network-Coded and Multi-Level Cache-Enabled Heterogeneous Network
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

One of the paramount advantages of multi-level cache-enabled (MLCE) networks is pushing contents proximity to the network edge and proactively caching them at multiple transmitters (i.e., small base-stations (SBSs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and cache-enabled device-to-device (CE-D2D) users). As such, the fronthaul congestion between a core network and a large number of transmitters is alleviated. For this objective, we exploit network coding (NC) to schedule a set of users to the same transmitter. Focusing on this, we consider the throughput maximization problem that optimizes jointly the network-coded user scheduling and power allocation, subject to fronthaul capacity, transmit power, and NC constraints. Given the intractability of the problem, we decouple it into two separate subproblems. In the first subproblem, we consider the network-coded user scheduling problem for the given power allocation, while in the second subproblem, we use the NC resulting user schedule to optimize the power levels. We design an innovative \textit{two-layered rate-aware NC (RA-IDNC)} graph to solve the first subproblem and evaluate the second subproblem using an iterative function evaluation (IFE) approach. Simulation results are presented to depict the throughput gain of the proposed approach over the existing solutions.
Gridded UAV Swarm for Secrecy Rate Maximization with Unknown Eavesdropper
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

This paper considers grid formation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm for maximizing the secrecy rate in the presence of an unknown eavesdropper. In particular, the UAV swarm performs coordinated beamforming onto the null space of the legitimate channel to jam the eavesdropper located at an unknown location. By nulling the channel between the legitimate receiver and the UAV swarm, we obtain an optimal trajectory and jamming power allocation for each UAV enabling wideband single ray beamforming to improve the secrecy rate. Results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed UAV-aided jamming scheme as well as the optimal number of UAVs in the swarm necessary to observe a saturation effect in the secrecy rate. We also show the optimal radius of the unknown but constrained location of the eavesdropper.
Exploring the Subgraph Density-Size Trade-off via the Lovász Extension
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2021
Year: 2021

Given an undirected graph, the Densest-k-Subgraph problem (DkS) seeks to find a subset of k vertices such that the sum of the edge weights in the corresponding subgraph is maximized. The problem is known to be NP-hard, and is also very difficult to approximate, in the worst-case. In this paper, we present a new convex relaxation for the problem. Our key idea is to reformulate DkS as minimizing a submodular function subject to a cardinality constraint. Exploiting the fact that submodular functions possess a convex, continuous extension (known as the Lovász extension), we propose to minimize the Lovász extension over the convex hull of the cardinality constraints. Although the Lovász extension of a submodular function does not admit an analytical form in general, for DkS we show that it does. We leverage this result to develop a highly scalable algorithm based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) for solving the relaxed problem. Coupled with a pair of fortuitously simple rounding schemes, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing baselines on real-world graphs and can yield high quality sub-optimal solutions which typically are a posteriori no worse than 65-80\% of the optimal density.
Custom Object Detection via Multi-Camera Self-Supervised Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

This paper proposes MCSSL, a self-supervised learning approach for building custom object detection models in multi-camera networks. MCSSL associates bounding boxes between cameras with overlapping fields of view by leveraging epipolar geometry and state-of-the-art tracking and reID algorithms, and prudently generates two sets of pseudo-labels to fine-tune backbone and detection networks respectively in an object detection model. To train effectively on pseudo-labels,a powerful reID-like pretext task with consistency loss is constructed for model customization. Our evaluation shows that compared with legacy selftraining methods, MCSSL improves average mAP by 5.44% and 6.76% on WildTrack and CityFlow dataset, respectively.
BinaryCoP: Binary Neural Network-based COVID-19 Face-Mask Wear and Positioning Predictor on Edge Devices
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Face masks have long been used in many areas of everyday life to protect against the inhalation of hazardous fumes and particles. They also offer an effective solution in healthcare for bi-directional protection against air-borne diseases. Wearing and positioning the mask correctly is essential for its function. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) offer an excellent solution for face recognition and classification of correct mask wearing and positioning. In the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, such algorithms can be used at entrances to corporate buildings, airports, shopping areas, and other indoor locations, to mitigate the spread of the virus. These application scenarios impose major challenges to the underlying compute platform. The inference hardware must be cheap, small and energy efficient, while providing sufficient memory and compute power to execute accurate CNNs at a reasonably low latency. To maintain data privacy of the public, all processing must remain on the edge-device, without any communication with cloud servers. To address these challenges, we present a low-power binary neural network classifier for correct facial-mask wear and positioning. The classification task is implemented on an embedded FPGA, performing high-throughput binary operations. Classification can take place at up to ~6400 frames-per-second, easily enabling multi-camera, speed-gate settings or statistics collection in crowd settings. When deployed on a single entrance or gate, the idle power consumption is reduced to 1.6W, improving the battery-life of the device. We achieve an accuracy of up to 98% for four wearing positions of the MaskedFace-Net dataset. To maintain equivalent classification accuracy for all face structures, skin-tones, hair types, and mask types, the algorithms are tested for their ability to generalize the relevant features over all subjects using the Grad-CAM approach.
Promoting Fair Proposers, Fair Responders or Both? Cost-Efficient Interference in the Spatial Ultimatum Game
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2021
Year: 2021

Institutions and investors face the constant challenge of making accurate decisions and predictions regarding how best they should distribute their endowments. The problem of achieving an optimal outcome at minimal cost has been extensively studied and resolved using several heuristics. However, these works usually fail to address how an external party can target different types of fair behaviour or do not take into account how limited information can shape this complex interplay. Here, we consider the well-known Ultimatum game in a spatial setting and propose a hierarchy of interference mechanisms based on the amount of information available to an external decision-maker and desired standards of fairness. Our analysis reveals that monitoring the population at a macroscopic level requires more strict information gathering in order to obtain an optimal outcome and that local observations can mediate this requirement. Moreover, we identify the conditions which must be met for an individual to be eligible for investment in order to avoid unnecessary spending. We further explore the effects of varying mutation or behavioural exploration rates on the choice of investment strategy and total accumulated costs to the investor. Overall, our analysis provides new insights about efficient heuristics for cost-efficient promotion of fairness in societies. Finally, we discuss the differences between our findings and previous work done on the PD and present our suggestions for promoting fairness as an external decision-maker.
Vampire With a Brain Is a Good ITP Hammer
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2021
Year: 2021

Vampire has been for a long time the strongest first-order automatic theorem prover, widely used for hammer-style proof automation in ITPs such as Mizar, Isabelle, HOL, and Coq. In this work, we considerably improve the performance of Vampire in hammering over the full Mizar library by enhancing its saturation procedure with efficient neural guidance. In particular, we employ a recently proposed recursive neural network classifying the generated clauses based only on their derivation history. Compared to previous neural methods based on considering the logical content of the clauses, our architecture makes evaluating a single clause much less time consuming. The resulting system shows good learning capability and improves on the state-of-the-art performance on the Mizar library, while proving many theorems that the related ENIGMA system could not prove in a similar hammering evaluation.
Parameterized Complexity of Immunization in the Threshold Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2021
Year: 2021

We consider the problem of controlling the spread of harmful items in networks, such as the contagion proliferation of diseases or the diffusion of fake news. We assume the linear threshold model of diffusion where each node has a threshold that measures the node resistance to the contagion. We study the parameterized complexity of the problem: Given a network, a set of initially contaminated nodes, and two integers $k$ and $\ell$, is it possible to limit the diffusion to at most $k$ other nodes of the network by immunizing at most $\ell$ nodes? We consider several parameters associated to the input, including: the bounds $k$ and $\ell$, the maximum node degree $Δ$, the treewidth, and the neighborhood diversity of the network. We first give $W[1]$ or $W[2]$-hardness results for each of the considered parameters. Then we give fixed-parameter algorithms for some parameter combinations.
Extremal learning: extremizing the output of a neural network in regression problems
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Neural networks allow us to model complex relationships between variables. We show how to efficiently find extrema of a trained neural network in regression problems. Finding the extremizing input of an approximated model is formulated as the training of an additional neural network with a loss function that minimizes when the extremizing input is achieved. We further show how to incorporate additional constraints on the input vector such as limiting the extrapolation of the extremizing input vector from the original training data set. An instructional example of this approach using TensorFlow is included.
ORCA: Enabling an Owner-centric and Data-driven Management Paradigm for Future Heterogeneous Edge-IoT Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2021
Year: 2021

Integrating Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing for "Edge-IoT" systems, converged with machine intelligence, has the potentials of enabling a wide range of applications in smart homes, factories and cities. Edge-IoT can connect many diverse devices and the IoT asset owners can run heterogeneous IoT systems supported by various vendors or service providers (SPs), using either cloud or local edge computing (or both) for resource assistance. The existing methods typically manage the systems as separate vertical "silos", or in a vendor/SP-centric way, which suffers from significant challenges. In this paper, we present a novel owner-centric management paradigm named "ORCA" to address the gaps left by the owner-centric paradigm and empower the IoT assets owners to effectively identify and mitigate potential issues in their own network premises, regardless the vendors/SPs' situations. ORCA aims to be scalable and extensible in assisting IoT owners to perform intelligent management through a behavior-oriented and data-driven approach. ORCA is an ongoing project and the preliminary results indicate that it can significantly empower the IoT systems owners to better manage their IoT assets.
A bandit approach to curriculum generation for automatic speech recognition
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

The Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) task has been a challenging domain especially for low data scenarios with few audio examples. This is the main problem in training ASR systems on the data from low-resource or marginalized languages. In this paper we present an approach to mitigate the lack of training data by employing Automated Curriculum Learning in combination with an adversarial bandit approach inspired by Reinforcement learning. The goal of the approach is to optimize the training sequence of mini-batches ranked by the level of difficulty and compare the ASR performance metrics against the random training sequence and discrete curriculum. We test our approach on a truly low-resource language and show that the bandit framework has a good improvement over the baseline transfer-learning model.
Classification based on Topological Data Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is an emergent field that aims to discover topological information hidden in a dataset. TDA tools have been commonly used to create filters and topological descriptors to improve Machine Learning (ML) methods. This paper proposes an algorithm that applies TDA directly to multi-class classification problems, even imbalanced datasets, without any further ML stage. The proposed algorithm built a filtered simplicial complex on the dataset. Persistent homology is then applied to guide choosing a sub-complex where unlabeled points obtain the label with most votes from labeled neighboring points. To assess the proposed method, 8 datasets were selected with several degrees of class entanglement, variability on the samples per class, and dimensionality. On average, the proposed TDABC method was capable of overcoming baseline classifiers (wk-NN and k-NN) in each of the computed metrics, especially on classifying entangled and minority classes.
Adversarial example generation with AdaBelief Optimizer and Crop Invariance
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Deep neural networks are vulnerable to adversarial examples, which are crafted by applying small, human-imperceptible perturbations on the original images, so as to mislead deep neural networks to output inaccurate predictions. Adversarial attacks can thus be an important method to evaluate and select robust models in safety-critical applications. However, under the challenging black-box setting, most existing adversarial attacks often achieve relatively low success rates on adversarially trained networks and advanced defense models. In this paper, we propose AdaBelief Iterative Fast Gradient Method (ABI-FGM) and Crop-Invariant attack Method (CIM) to improves the transferability of adversarial examples. ABI-FGM and CIM can be readily integrated to build a strong gradient-based attack to further boost the success rates of adversarial examples for black-box attacks. Moreover, our method can also be naturally combined with other gradient-based attack methods to build a more robust attack to generate more transferable adversarial examples against the defense models. Extensive experiments on the ImageNet dataset demonstrate the method's effectiveness. Whether on adversarially trained networks or advanced defense models, our method has higher success rates than state-of-the-art gradient-based attack methods.
Representation Learning for Natural Language Processing
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

This book aims to review and present the recent advances of distributed representation learning for NLP, including why representation learning can improve NLP, how representation learning takes part in various important topics of NLP, and what challenges are still not well addressed by distributed representation.
Regret Minimization in Heavy-Tailed Bandits
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

We revisit the classic regret-minimization problem in the stochastic multi-armed bandit setting when the arm-distributions are allowed to be heavy-tailed. Regret minimization has been well studied in simpler settings of either bounded support reward distributions or distributions that belong to a single parameter exponential family. We work under the much weaker assumption that the moments of order $(1+ε)$ are uniformly bounded by a known constant B, for some given $ε> 0$. We propose an optimal algorithm that matches the lower bound exactly in the first-order term. We also give a finite-time bound on its regret. We show that our index concentrates faster than the well known truncated or trimmed empirical mean estimators for the mean of heavy-tailed distributions. Computing our index can be computationally demanding. To address this, we develop a batch-based algorithm that is optimal up to a multiplicative constant depending on the batch size. We hence provide a controlled trade-off between statistical optimality and computational cost.
Frame Codes For Distributed Coded Computation
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

Distributed computation is a framework used to break down a complex computational task into smaller tasks and distributing them among computational nodes. Erasure correction codes have recently been introduced and have become a popular workaround to the well known ``straggling nodes'' problem, in particular, by matching linear coding for linear computation tasks. It was observed that decoding tends to amplify the computation ``noise'', i.e., the numerical errors at the computation nodes. We propose taking advantage of the case that more nodes return than minimally required. We show how a clever construction of a polynomial code, inspired by recent results on robust frames, can significantly reduce the amplification of noise, and achieves graceful degradation with the number of straggler nodes.